Michael Eskin has taught at Cambridge University, UK and Columbia University, USA. He is a critic, translator, philosopher and publisher, and his books include Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandel’shtam, and Celan (2000), Poetic Affairs: Celan, Grünbein, Brodsky (2008), and Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022).

• Prefatory NoteIntroduction: A Brief Discourse (Mostly) on Method1. On a Difficult Book to Write, Literary Facts, and Grünbein's America2. The Greatest American Poet of the German Language3. Coming of Age as an American Poet in Germany4. "Jews, Real Jews"5. Writing America as a German Poet6. The German Grünbein's German America7. The End of the AffairEpilogueAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

As revelatory as it is disconcerting, and grounded in an encyclopedic knowledge, this book offers an eye-opening analysis of a major contemporary poet, Durs Grünbein, and of the cultural discourses of the Berlin Republic. Eskin uncovers an anti-Americanism and related antisemitism hiding in plain sight in Grünbein’s oeuvre, and trenchantly asks how and why this aspect of the work of a poet so prominent in current German letters could be overlooked. Timely, cogent, uncomfortable yet compelling, this is a book that everyone must read to better understand our current troubled times.

Michael Eskin has taught at Cambridge University, UK and Columbia University, USA. He is a critic, translator, philosopher and publisher, and his books include Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandel’shtam, and Celan (2000), Poetic Affairs: Celan, Grünbein, Brodsky (2008), and Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022).

• Prefatory NoteIntroduction: A Brief Discourse (Mostly) on Method1. On a Difficult Book to Write, Literary Facts, and Grünbein's America2. The Greatest American Poet of the German Language3. Coming of Age as an American Poet in Germany4. "Jews, Real Jews"5. Writing America as a German Poet6. The German Grünbein's German America7. The End of the AffairEpilogueAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

As revelatory as it is disconcerting, and grounded in an encyclopedic knowledge, this book offers an eye-opening analysis of a major contemporary poet, Durs Grünbein, and of the cultural discourses of the Berlin Republic. Eskin uncovers an anti-Americanism and related antisemitism hiding in plain sight in Grünbein’s oeuvre, and trenchantly asks how and why this aspect of the work of a poet so prominent in current German letters could be overlooked. Timely, cogent, uncomfortable yet compelling, this is a book that everyone must read to better understand our current troubled times.

Michael Eskin has taught at Cambridge University, UK and Columbia University, USA. He is a critic, translator, philosopher and publisher, and his books include Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandel’shtam, and Celan (2000), Poetic Affairs: Celan, Grünbein, Brodsky (2008), and Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022).

• Prefatory NoteIntroduction: A Brief Discourse (Mostly) on Method1. On a Difficult Book to Write, Literary Facts, and Grünbein's America2. The Greatest American Poet of the German Language3. Coming of Age as an American Poet in Germany4. "Jews, Real Jews"5. Writing America as a German Poet6. The German Grünbein's German America7. The End of the AffairEpilogueAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

As revelatory as it is disconcerting, and grounded in an encyclopedic knowledge, this book offers an eye-opening analysis of a major contemporary poet, Durs Grünbein, and of the cultural discourses of the Berlin Republic. Eskin uncovers an anti-Americanism and related antisemitism hiding in plain sight in Grünbein’s oeuvre, and trenchantly asks how and why this aspect of the work of a poet so prominent in current German letters could be overlooked. Timely, cogent, uncomfortable yet compelling, this is a book that everyone must read to better understand our current troubled times.